It is not the grand ferocious edge of the world you might expect but rather a gentle sigh that ends in a calm and quiet bay. Even the name sounds passive: oo-shoo-ay-ah. All those open vowels, that sibilant "sh" passing over the lips like a whisper, ending in a weak "ah" that seems to trail off like a dying breath.

Despite its claims, Ushuaia is actually the second-to-last town in South America (Puerto Williams, across the Magellan Strait, is the last) but has marketed its way to the boastful title of "The End of the World" and thus become the destination for those seeking to punctuate their wanderlust. And so it serves as an apex and a nadir. Where all hence become thence. The end to so many journeys and the beginning to as many more. It is the mother of all homecoming.

Standing at the literal end of the road of an entire landmass that for so long was the world's blind corner around which so many men temerariously turned, you can't help but think of Magellan and his demise, something that reads like a fabled fall portended by an old gypsy woman in a bustling Mediterranean port. You think of Shackleton and the ferocity and aplomb with which he conquered that Long Night adrift in a sunless sea of ice. You think of Sir Francis Drake. Of Cook. Of Lewis and Clarke. Of Livingstone. Of Ted Simon.

And you think back on Colombia and its sweet delights that now feel like an unrecoverable dream. And you think of all those august suns setting over the Pacific---in San Blas, in Sayulite, in Mazunte, in Playa El Esteron, in San Juan del Sur, in Tamarindo, in Santa Catalina, in Montanitas, in Punta de Lobos---how each would hover an eternity on the edge of the world until every drop of color was bled from its fiery heart and whole crowds of people would stop to stare as if witnessing the final spectacular death of the universe. You think of that masked catrina in León that pulled you from the crowd and danced with you to a country burlesque and then disappeared into the mob as mysteriously as she arrived, like an apparition passing through this world on its way to the next. You think of that night in a Bogota bar as old as the country itself, a grand colonial villa where a caramel-skinned nightingale sang in a language that even after eight months was still foreign to you but you didn't need to know the words because it was as if two centuries of woe in that house had finally found release in her sad and soulful voice. And you think of the father and son you stopped to help on the road to Cafayate, and how disappointed you were that your tire pump did not fit the valve on their cartwheel because you wanted to be a good citizen and reach out across cultures to sew another stitch in the fabric of the world, and how they too seemed to want the same unspoken thing, but it didn't fit and they thanked you profusely and you thanked them endlessly not wanting the chance to connect to end but it did and you rode on.

And the tide of memories continues rushing in as you stand on the crest of an entire continent looking out over a placid bay beyond which, after 456 days of pushing on, you cannot push further. So you wipe the bugs off your face shield for thousandth time and swing your booted paw up over that pillion once again and turn your grimy forks north, away from the impenetrable sea and towards the beckoning light of a new unknown.

Crayola's current edition of its famed 120-crayon box comes with twelve colors whose primary hue is blue: Robin Egg Blue, Aquamarine, Turquoise Blue, Sky Blue, Blue Green, Pacific Blue, Cerulean, Cornflower, Midnight Blue, Navy Blue, Denim, and just plain old "Blue", which has been the company's primary blue since 1949. These are the blues of youth, the names inculcated into young minds as they color and scribble their way to maturity. So you can be forgiven if when traveling the Southern Cone you find yourself speechless on a shore overlooking a blue-y bay that is not found in the taxonomy of Crayola colors. In Patagonia, a new vocabulary is needed.

There is the blue that is a cool emerald green, revealing its deep blue heart in the river depths while the rapids churn up a leafy green. This blue is found in test tubes and beakers of B-movie scientists and might be called Love Potion Blue.

There is the azure-like blue that is everywhere in cruise ship ads and found in the shallows of Lake General Carrera. This is Vacation Blue.

There is the pasty blue of glacial run-off. It looks like the result of a dropped grocery bag where the mouthwash split open and corrupted the skim milk. It was made famous by George Lucas in Star Wars as the milk drunk by bowl-topped budding heroes. It is Blue Milk.

Blue Milk is not to be confused with the creamy blue that is more consistent in color and looks fatty and rich in flavor if only you could dip your finger in and taste a dollop. That one is Icing Blue.

There is the blue of diaper and feminine product ads, designed no doubt through focus groups and marketing executives trying to deflect viewers from thinking of the bodily fluids their products necessarily are designed to deal with. This blue, by definition, is the cleanest color on earth. It is Sanitary Blue.

There is a sort of blue found on overcast days that is all gray but for the slightest cool tint that becomes perceptible only after extended staring. This is Patient Blue.

There is what might be called Icarus Blue, described as traditional sky blue that has fallen into the water below. It is the same color as the sky, but deeper and more opaque.

There is the blue of shallow rivers where sandy bottoms are partially visible through translucent waters, creating a purplish hue that looks like the welt under pasty white skin. This is Bruised Blue.

There is the blue that is perfect in its blueness, even more than Crayola's primary "Blue". It seems to be father to all blues, more conceptual than actual, except that in Patagonia if fills large lakes. It may be rightly called Platonic Blue.

There is Bubble Gum Blue, the exact color of fully-chewed blueberry-flavored bubble gum.

These are just some of the myriad shades of blue that flow through Patagonia, each its own unique addition to the palette of quietude.

Caleta Tortel is a bayside village near the southern end of the Carretera Austral. Settled in the 1950s to take advantage of abundant timber resources in the region, Tortel had been inaccessible by road until just 2003. The hills that surround the pale green bay make for difficult construction so residents have had to be creative in their methods, employing a generous use of stilts and, most notably, building a series of cyprus walkways that serve as the city's streets. Even the open spaces are constructed of wood: playgrounds and plazas are confined in small lumber gazebos that look as much like the bowels of a carrack as some simulacra of recreation in a stilted Patagonian hamlet.

Since being designated a National Monument in 2001, residents are prohibited from tampering with structures within 80m of the shoreline. This prohibition covers the dozens of derelict boats that lie rotting like gutted whales in the sand under Tortel's boardwalks. The rest of the town is similarly abandoned, as if constructed entirely of flotsam and jetsam washed ashore from ships lost somewhere out in the fog. Binnacles and wheel barrows and small-block engines sit rusting about the village waiting for owners that will never return. Tortel's crew of stray dogs, each with the salty scruff and raffish manner of a Nantucket seaman, slink through the marshy shore sniffing out bits of dried fish or edible garbage thrown overboard from the walkways above. Cats pass through the dense brush dunnage between houses to mewl and protest the invasion of strangers. The whole village seems some gray limbo where everything is orphaned to an eternity in the mist.

You sinuous scourges, you that are fat with promise. You dusty paths etched by boot and by hoof into the immovable granite giants of this land. You blue-black strips of macadam stamped with the fists of modern machines into this primordial rock. You, that led with indifference Incan armies and Spanish conquistadors to triumph and to calamity alike. You, that cradled young Che and guided him to epiphany and infamy. Guide me, too, to the bones of your lost civilizations and their lost cities. Show me their secrets. Reveal me your hidden corners where mountain peaks conduct the swirling firmament in silent symphonies of light. Where snow falls on the wooly backs of wild camelids that stare at strange forms motoring passed. Strike fear in me with your dizzying drop-offs. I will ride on. Whelm me in your rocky streams and numb me with your bitter alpine air. I am yours. Beat me, you malevolent masters, with impossible distances and ferocious winds. I pick myself up and trundle on. I am your acolyte, your willing slave ready to suffer long hours and lost days in your interminable soup of switchbacks. I will endure your treadmill of torture, your endless rows of ruts and puddles and embedded rocks that pummel my tires like the fury of a thousand fists and wrest control from my weak and weary arms. I am painted in your mud and dust, I am bathed in your glacial streams, I am baptized in your faith. Lead on, you sirens of tomorrow. I will not yield. It is forever morning, and the bright day lies before me. Lead on.

The marble caves of Lake General Carrera seem to have been transported through time and space from a 1960's East Village studio to an enormous glacial lake in central Patagonia. Long tendrils of dripping calcite, thick impastos of gray-brown silt looking as if freshly applied, mineral veins running over and around the columnal forms like lines in a blind drawing exercise, all evoke the luscious surfaces of de Kooning painting or Rauschenberg combine. These works of nature sit in island galleries illuminated by a lake so blue that it almost seems toxic.

As a seasoned traveler you may find yourself in a conversation comparing prior shamanisitic experiences when it is pointed out that there are in fact some medicinal plants growing a few feet from your chair. Your enthusiasm may be misconstrued as confidence and then you could find yourself handed a half meter of echinopsis pachanoi and assigned the task of converting the plant into an elixir of the soul. Don't panic. Keep in mind the following things and all will be well:

- Google is your friend. More information on plant preparation than should be legally allowed is available with just a few keystrokes.

- Don't forget to look up the proper indigenous name for the plant (huachuma). It will make you sound like you know what you're doing.

- When cooking the strange brew, bring a book. A full twelve hours may be needed to fully separate the pulp from the alkaloids. It's a good time to bite off a chunk of 1Q84's 1,317 pages.

- Think only positive thoughts while touching the cactus and cooking the brew because maybe all that metaphysical shit is real.

- Dress accordingly for the ceremony. Go sock-less and maybe put your hair in a bun if it's long enough. Anything that gives you the air of carefree chaperone to the spirit world. If you have a hemp shirt, wear it.

- Pick a sacred space for the ceremony. Try to avoid hilltops in direct sunlight. You'd think they're a perfect combination of view and nature, but you'd be wrong. Sunlight only amplifies nausea.

- Encourage the group to make some music. It will call the spirits to you and create vibrations through which inter-world communication can take place. Also, it gives you something to kill the boredom while you wait the necessary two hours for the mescaline to kick in. Drums, wooden flutes, maracas make simple but effective instruments. Maybe don't try playing the flute if you can't get it to make concordant notes.

- Don't think about the taste. Dear god, think about anything but the bitter taste. And maybe add more lemon juice next time.

- Ignore the sounds of your fellow traveler's vomiting. Be a good shaman and remind them that their body is just passing all its negative energy. And breakfast.

It's a remarkable thing just how big a cow's stomach is. It seems to take up the entirety of the animal, as if the rest were just an empty warehouse built solely to house an enormous engine of digestion. When removed in the first stages of a formal slaughter it spills out of the belly cut as messy and misshapen as a newborn babe, filling an entire wheelbarrow as it is trundled off to be hosed down in some shady corner of the yard. What's left is a much less formidable beast: an empty chamber of pasty reds and glaucous whites upon which a sort of reverse transubstantiation is performed.

The act of butchering an animal is the spiritual opposite of the art of creation. Whereas an artist takes raw materials and works them into a complex form, a butcher takes a complex thing and with each pass of the blade transforms it into raw matter. But make no mistake, butchery is not artless. There is an order and precision to the way a skilled carnicero works. It is as mystical an act as anything performed in a temple. There may be no proper antonym for the word "miracle", but the process of butchering an animal is its performative equivalent. The effect is a sobering disenchantment that is akin to watching the rote teardown of a carnival show: each loosened stake and untied rope is a fatal blow to the magic and wonder once contained within. And when the last tarp is rolled up and carried off nothing of the mystery survives.

"There is no 'there' there," Gertrude Stein famously said of her hometown Oakland. Of Peru it may be said "there is no 'there' anywhere". With the lone and brilliant exception of Cusco, the country's inland populations live in indistinct cinderblock cities where rebar rises from the tops of unfinished buildings in anticipation of a future that will never arrive. But the appeal of Peru is not the unmemorable "theres" but rather the immense spaces that separate them. Spaces so vast and desolate they seem to exist beyond the measure of man: mountains so high you can see the curvature of the earth from their summits, deserts as dry and dead as the surface of the moon.

And flowing through this great sea of green and brown is an array of asphalt and dirt tracks that are as diverse and resolute as the land itself. They zig-zag up mountain slopes and run low along river banks. They twist around white-capped peaks and cut straight through desert valleys. They pass through milky clouds and cross over bridges of wood, of steel, of concrete, of fired earth. They are bisected by streams and assembled Gordian-like in urban knots. They are wide and they are narrow, but mostly they are narrow. They are wet, muddy, snowy, rocky, dusty, drowned, shoulderless and sand-filled. They are seamless asphalt currents that rock you to sleep with a gentle rhythm of curves; they are punishing treadmills of rubble that toss you about like a skiff in a full Atlantic storm. But they always inevitably lead to places so raw and beautiful you hope never to get "there".

The Ecuadorian Andes are an enormous quilt of earthen patches that spreads over the central highlands, separating the arid coast to the west from the Amazon rainforests in the east. They are something to behold, a chorus of green that sings continuously through the central spine of the country, offering endless new wonder around every hairpin turn and behind every passing cloud. The slopes, tiled with crop fields and cow pastures, appear as enormous mosaics of jade and emerald that glimmer under waves of golden sunlight like the gleam on some great Incan treasure.

The Nariz del Diablo ("Devil's Nose") is a mountain prominence along Ecuador's rail system formed by the convergence of two rivers. To get the train down the steep canyon walls engineers designed a series of switchbacks where the engine reverses direction twice during the 500m decent. This section of track was built a century ago with immigrant labor from the Caribbean, many of whom permanently settled in the country. In total, an estimated 2,000 workers died during construction, leading many locals to believe the project was cursed and giving rise to the mountain's ominous name.

Almost nothing is known about the civilization that carved the inscrutable idols in Colombia's Parque Arqueológico de San Agustín. Just a few points of data from carbon dating, a piece of indecipherable script, and a lot of archeological speculation. The scultures themselves are as mysterious as the culture that crafted them. But their lack of context invites you to imagine for each figure an eccentric personality and unique superpower, like a Pokémon character, as you stroll through the park.

Meanwhile, just across the border in Tulcan, Ecuador, a cemetery is populated with similarly playful figures carved out of plump cypress trees. These stand across from the walls of funerary vaults and around the somber headstones of grave sites in playful mockery, their cheeks swollen with youthful impishness, openly taunting the staid sepulchers of the Old World.

Visitors refer to the 60m tall wax palms in the Cocora Valley as "Dr. Seuss trees" due to their attenuated trunks and shock of tousled fronds that call forth from the pages of The Lorax. Those cartoonish proportions are so oddly out of place among the familiar forms of the surrounding pastures that they appear as alien invaders in a foreign land. On the mossy slopes above troops of them disappear into the passing mist as if charging the smokey ramparts of some unseen redoubt. A five-hour hike follows a trail that cuts through cloud forests with raging rivers and wobbly suspension bridges, and then down to the valley floor where the wax palms stand tall and erect like soldiers at attention. Along the way, mustangs and cattle form ghostly figures in the fog. And everywhere everything is green, and everything is wet.

El Peñon de Guatapé is a 200m high inselberg that overlooks eastern Antioquia, where a man-made lake spreads its waters like jade capillaries throughout the surrounding hills. A corset stitch of stairs leads you zig-zagging up to the top and its panoramic feast. In contrast, the nearby hamlet of Guatapé is more intimate and contained. Its streets bloom with a bouquet of colorful buildings, each painted in its own funky palette.

Cabo de la Vela sits in the northwest corner of the untamed La Guajira peninsula, where the asphalt ends and route finding consists of a lottery of faded tracks written in the desert floor. There, fifty miles from the nearest petrol station, gas is sold to desperate motorists in repurposed plastic bottles hanging like fresh butcher cuts from the driftwood beams of thatched huts. If you can decipher a path through this wasteland you will discover a vast milky blue sea that is as lifeless as the land. No sunbathers, no jet skies, no hordes of seagulls pickpocketing tourists, no peddlers hawking local wares. Just waves lapping against the sand while lonesome boats rock silently in the tide.

The only activity in Cabo are the kite surfers, drawn to the area's steady breeze, who glide across the the surface of the water like pelicans, occasionally lifted up into the heavens by a rogue gust. For non-surfers, there is nothing to do but pass the time until the day's psychedelic sunset. No cell service, no wifi, no electricity during daylight hours. The whole place is like a hidden land described in some children's fable: a journey beyond civilization where a lost tribe lives under Olympian skies and colorful water acrobats have the power to fly.

Cartagena is a city ruled by the sun, which tyrannizes the population with its relentless heat and blinding glare. Locals defend themselves with umbrellas, with newspapers stretched aloft like Roman phalanges withstanding an arrow attack, or sometimes with just a bare hand sacrificed up to Apollo. Unprepared tourists keep local hat vendors rich or simply resign to burn, a cost of Caribbean travel. As the day progresses, the sun herds citizens toward thin strips of shadowy relief where they dance and twist in awkward passes to avoid stepping out into the menacing sunlight. This makes for humorous people watching: as the temperature rises, the common courtesies of sidewalk interaction slacken in favor of personal survival. When the heat peaks in mid-afternoon, the shaded side of the street becomes so fat with people and the light side so vacant that it threatens to capsize the city.

Drifting along at eight knots under a full moon atop a man-made mountain in a man-made river you feel that you have entered some fabled land of giant beasts and Homeric heroes. The ships as impossibly large, floating cities. The Centenario Bridge, which spans the narrowest portion of the Panama Canal, the Culebra Cut, hangs over the water like the trap of some prehistoric arachnid. The locks, which raise and lower the ships 27m across the 80km route, are at once incredibly simple in concept and inconceivably complex in function that they seem contrived by some powerful necromancer. It is all so monstrous and mythical. And yet it was ordinary men that built this Tower of Babel. A century ago, the lowly bipeds of a small isthmus nation unaided from above or below built something on the scale of nature's grandest treasures. It's baffling.

Joseph Campbell suggested that the West's dominate attitude towards nature was set in motion in the opening pages of the Old Testament, when Adam was appointed master over the flora and fauna. The Fall was man's separation from harmony with nature, and since that day, men have climbed, crossed, caught, killed, carved, and generally conquered every natural thing under the heavens. So it is no surprise that when Cerro Negro, the youngest volcano in Central America, reached a height barely larger than a mound, somewhere man was devising a plan to sublimate it.

Volcano boarding sounds more exciting than it is. Like most downward adventures---skiing, BASE jumping, surfing---the bulk of the challenge is getting to the top. The launch is all gravity. In the case of Cerro Negro, a half-hour shuttle ride from León is followed by a forty-minute hike up the mountain. The subsequent 700m trip down is not much different from winter sledding, except that instead of the gentle tickle of melting snowflakes on your cheek you get a face full of rocks pelting you at 70 kph that will remain in your teeth long after the thrill of the ride remains in your memory.

Somewhere between Oaxaca City and the costal town of Puerta Angel sits a small mountain pueblo stolen from the Northern California coast, complete with hippies and organic produce and evening fog. Strategically placed across town are hand painted signs that advertise "Navarro 4 Elementos Temazcal” with crudely drawn directional arrows. These announcements are largely superfluous, however, as everyone knows Navarro. You simply need ask around.

Navarro is a local shaman that provides temazcal rituals, a form of pre-Colombian sweat lodge. With his long mane tied up in a thick black bun, the few gray hairs in his beard betraying his fifty-some years, he looks more like a floor manager at an acoustic guitar shop than some indigenous priest. His dark eyes radiate crows feet that curl up in a manner which could only come from a lifetime of smiling. Rocco, his canine friend, is more peer than pet: when asked after returning from an errand where Rocco is, Navarro replies, ”I dunno, he’s probably hanging out in town. He goes where he wants." Such is the pace of San Jose del Pacifico. It is a town that drifts.

Navarro learned all he knows about medicinal plants from his grandmother, with whom he spent fifteen of his adult years learning the craft. He is also an expert scuba diver and trained chiropractor but those are mere accouterment gathered from a drifter’s life. His true talent is for the temazcal, a ancient steam bath used by Mayans for body cleansing, battle recovery, and childbirth.

The temazcal begins when you enter a small damp concrete igloo barely larger than a dog house. Smoldering rocks are shoveled into a central pit, a bucket of boiling tea is placed inside, and the entrance is covered. In near darkness you dip a bushel of herbs into the bucket and drip the hot liquid onto the stones, a process that spawns a thick, sweet steam that fills the enclosure. It is, in effect, a tea sauna and each breath has the trace odor and subtle taste of a cup of herbal tea. After twenty minutes of such brewing, when you feel completely relaxed in the void, Navarro exchanges the first bucket for one of a different mixture meant to induce fever. Then comes a period of increasing tension and vertigo, when darkness and claustrophobia start to press in and suffocate you until you don’t think you can take any more. Just then the door opens and you’re led out and the fresh mountain air washes over you hard like a breaking wave. After a shower of cool spring water and a body rinse with lukewarm tea (“it’s good for the skin”), you are as relaxed as a afternoon cat. It is here when you are in the proper mindset for the mushrooms.

****

Aldous Huxley called the brain a reducing valve with for the mind, something that limits consciousness rather than generates it. This view in fact has some medical basis: studies have shown psychedelics to actually reduce certain brain functions, effectively turning off the filter. After a thirty-year hiatus, research has rebooted on the therapeutic uses of hallucinogens. Here is what we know: they simulate serotonin, resulting in an elevated sense of happiness and well-being; they largely act outside of the dopamine pathways and as a result do not induce physical addiction; they seem to inhibit certain parts of the brain related to self-monitoring. This latter feature has proven helpful to people suffering from PTSD (see here and here) and to cancer patients dealing with depression (see here and here).

But none of this technical stuff is on your mind when you finish the cup of mild tea and swallow the last bite of the strangely tasty fungus (a bit like pan-seared shiitakes, but thicker and crunchier). Instead, you simply accept Navarro’s invitation to explore his jungle property. “There’s an exposed boulder that offers a good view. When you see a large maguey, turn left.” So you wander down through the trees until you find the maguey and you make yourself comfortable on the rock, and you look out over the forest and the mountains and the distant Pacific, and you wait for something to happen.

Though magic mushrooms are an optional part of the temazcal, they offer a final step in the regenerative ritual. Once ingested you have about twenty minutes until they take effect, and the remainder of the day to roam Navarro’s fifteen hectares of mountain wilderness. Usually only individuals and small groups opt for the mushrooms, but he once hosted a group of twenty-seven who elected to partake. He rolls his eyes and chuckles when he recounts the day, “I felt like the director of a psychiatric ward.” The property was a carnival of weirdos, people scattered across the hillside giggling at the empty air, lying in the dirt, wandering in circles gaping up at the sky. A half dozen-or-so were standing still as statues staring at some insignificant piece of nature. “My garden looked like an art museum”. He vowed not to do such a large group again. “The singular experiences are better. You learn that you don’t need anyone.”

****

When the landscape begins to breathe, swelling and shrinking like the thorax of some sleeping giant, you know the psilocybin has taken effect. All your sense organs are turned into overdrive, elevating every minute sensation to a distorted pitch. Flowers burn bright like fire. Hummingbirds pass with a whomp! as loud as a jet engine. Branches move and twist as if growing in some time-lapse video. Eventually the intensity settles and you reach a steady state of hallucinations that, fascinating as they are, are not so much seeing things that aren’t there but rather seeing more in what is there, as if by accident the face of your wristwatch popped off revealing for the first time the intricate and beautiful machinery that underlies its simple function. Such intense wonder at the world no doubt is the cause of infant drooling. And so you drool, like an infant, wide-eyed and drop-jawed, for the better part of the day: staring endlessly at the kaleidoscopic canopy above, repeatedly fondling the smooth waxy surface of a maguey tongue, intensely listening to the bees buzz in and out of the flaming flowers. You have become another one of Navarro’s inmates, a garden statue, some misfit standing petrified before a jungle shrub investigating the byzantine veins of its leaf while mouthing the word “wow” over and again, the psilocybin not leading through the rabbit hole to some lofty viewpoint as you'd expected but rather sucking you back into a state of doltish infancy.

And yet beyond the drool there is real revelation. Sounds that were once disturbing---the violent roar of semis on the road above---become just one more pleasant vibration in a sea of vibrations. Nothing is discordant, nothing disturbs. Worry and self-doubt are abandoned. Anything with origins in the past or future simply evaporates. What's left is the eternal happiness of a well-fed dog. Perhaps it’s the effect of the temazcal preface, perhaps it’s Navarro’s local variety of mushrooms which grow by a nearby spring (“The soil is good and healthy. The ones from Chiapas? They grow in fields fertilized by cow shit.”). Whatever the cause, the trip provides a peace and self-assurance that is rarely found outside of monastic temples.

At some point you realize that this beatific state will end and you don't want it to so you start devising ways to take a piece back with you, like stealing a shell from a deserted beach to which you’ll never return. But it is a futile ambition and you know you must learn to let go. So you just sit there on that rock with your maguey friend and you watch the night fog drift in from the Pacific. And you wonder where the hummingbirds went and when the flowers burned out. And you hear the distant chirps of unseen birds in the fading light and you notice that the wind has died down and everything is slowing. And so you take a deep breath and let it out and you accept that it is all slipping away as you stare in the gathering darkness at the ebbing wonder of the world.

There are a number of large archeological sites in southern Mexico and Central America, each of them possessing a unique character defined by its landscape, even as many of the architectural forms are repeated from site to site. What stands out most is how robust these sites are compared to those of Europe or the Western U.S. Here, little imagination is needed to complete the picture of life in these ancient cities.

Monte Alban is Zapotec city set on a hilltop overlooking the Oaxaca City, its elevated position offering sweeping views of the surrounding valley and giving it a rarefied and even heavenly feel. One of the highlights is its collection of danzantes, stone etchings of contorted figures. Originally thought to represent dancers, it is now believed that they are depictions of conquered enemies.

Palenque is an ancient Mayan city cut out of the Chiapas jungle. Its central palace is a labyrinth of halls, chambers, and towers that weave in and out. Various temples populate the surrounding jungle, the most prominent of which is the Temple of Inscriptions. Inside, a hidden passage discovered in 1948 leads to a chamber wherein former ruler Pakal (603-683CE) is buried in a elaborate tomb decorated with all manner of opulence. Though the sarcophagus remains in situ, a detailed replica is on display in the museum near the entrance of the park.

Tikal is an enormous Mayan city built deep in the Guatemalan jungle and covering an area of sixteen square kilometers within the larger Tikal National Park. Long jungle paths separate the structures, many of which remain completely covered by earth, appearing as unnatural mounds in the forest. The dense canopy offers encounters with wildlife, including spider and howler monkeys, blue morpho butterflies, ocellated turkeys, and white-nose coati. Approximately five hundred jaguars live in the park, too, about one per square kilometer. Among the various structures are temples, residences, alters, ball fields, and even what is believed to have been a jail.

Teotihuacan is simply huge. Its central Avenue of the Dead cuts through nearly 2km of what were once thriving residences and temples and markets, ending at the impressive Pyramid of the Moon, a 43m-high structure that rises up from the horizon as you walk down the main thoroughfare. But it is its twin tower, the 71m-high Pyramid of the Sun, that dominates the landscape. The line to climb it is well worth the wait, not only for its spectacular views of what was once the largest city in Mesoamerica, but for the opportunity to role play as a an ancient Teotihuacano. Upon reaching the top, visitors throw their hands up toward the sun as if possessed by the spirit of some high priest giving featly to the gods. The more intoxicating experience is to look down on the Sunday crowds gathered around the base of the structure and channel the rush of power an emperor must have felt high above a hundred thousand cheering subjects.